


250 Miles Up Above You

by kibasniper



Category: Psychonauts (Video Games)
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Long-Distance Relationship, Outer Space, Phone Calls & Telephones, Storytelling, Summer Camp, chloe's 22 and bobby's 27 here, preteen drama as told by bobby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25626718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kibasniper/pseuds/kibasniper
Summary: In the exosphere, Chloe listens to the camp drama from Bobby.
Relationships: Chloe Barge/Bobby Zilch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	250 Miles Up Above You

**Author's Note:**

> this took a few drafts to get right in terms of bobby retelling what happened to him to chloe, but overall, i'm pretty satisfied with it!

Chloe strapped herself in for the night. The velcro pinned her to her sleeping bag, keeping her snug and warm. While others would have found it uncomfortable for their limbs and body to be tethered to a wall, she had gotten used to it rather quickly. Compared to Intern Sanz, who Chloe could hear grumbling in her sleeping station about their cramped quarters one thin wall over, Chloe felt relaxed, her eyelids slowly coming together.

Although she yawned, she did not want to fall asleep. She still had just under a half hour before the crew’s mandatory sleeping period. Closing the slot to her station, she flicked on a light switch and found her phone strapped in its proper cubby. She tore off the velcro and let the phone float before telekinetically holding it in place. She turned it on and skimmed through text messages missed in the last few hours from when she had been examining new psitanium shards from remnants of meteors that had fizzled out in earth’s orbit. She had received a few cryptic images from Milka scheming around headquarters, photographs of Lili on her latest mission in Greece, and a couple from her family checking in on her and asking about “the weather up there.”

To her surprise, there had been none from Bobby. She had last communicated with him during their nightly video chat before she went to bed. While it was currently late afternoon for him, Chloe was seven hours ahead with the clock on the wall ticking closer to midnight. When she slept after their call, he would usually send her a few texts about camp drama in Whispering Rock, where he was currently stationed to teach psychic combat to the higher ranking cadets.

But she wasn’t worried. Going a day without receiving a text from him was not cause for alarm. She knew Whispering Rock was a hectic environment for both agent and camper. Having experienced only the camper half of it, she figured Bobby had been separating PSI cadets from setting each other on fire, and since he had mostly Aura Wranglers and Astral Warriors in his classes, she knew he was exhausted by the end of the afternoon. She would certainly not fault his radio silence to the sporadic messages she had sent him over the course of the day about her discoveries concerning radioactive microorganisms in the psitanium samples she had gathered.

She went to his name in her contact list. Stifling another yawn, she hit the video call button and gazed at her blurred reflection in the screen. She watched his name fade in and out, the ringing echoing amongst the walls only to come to an abrupt end when the screen focused on a white ceiling with a smoke detector barely in view.

“Hey, hey! Uh, I’ll be right there. Gimme a second,” came Bobby’s voice, his hand waving in and out of the frame.

“Take your time,” she said to the sound of bed springs creaking. She listened to his footsteps stomping around what she assumed was his bedroom in the counselors’ building. A shirt soared over his phone and landed off-screen, followed by another shirt and then another, his subsequent mumbling about dirty laundry making her eyes roll.

The screen shifted, showing off the standard oak desk and rolling chair each counselor was given at the start of the summer. She spotted several sheets of paper covering his laptop, pens scattered around an empty coffee mug and candy wrappers. She did smile at the lone framed photograph on the edge of his desk of themselves on their first infiltration mission together in Rome, his face a deep shade of purple with his arm outstretched to take the picture. 

The screen flipped around, and she bit back a giggle at Bobby’s flustered expression. He rubbed his left eye and waved with the other. Uneven splotches of pink colored his cheeks. He sat on his bed, the mattress bending inwards where he sat, the off-white blanket crumpled next to the flat pillow. His hair fell past his shoulders, tied up in a loose ponytail that hung down his back compared to his usual bouncy style. He wore a deep blue t-shirt with only a few wrinkles on it that he kept trying to smooth down as she greeted him, tilting her head.

“Did you just wake up? Isn’t it almost five in the afternoon where you are?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

“From a nap. I didn’t stay in bed all day,” he said, a defensive intonation in his voice. He brushed stray hairs off his brow, which Chloe noted had a bandage on his temple. His lips cracked upwards, and he shook his head, hunching forward and gripping his knees, his eagerness palpable through the screen. “Man, you are not gonna believe the night I had yesterday. I had no fuckin’ sleep ‘cause of it.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh? What happened? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m all good.” He patted the bandage, his eye twitching at the touch. “Only smarts when I apply pressure or whatever, but anyway, I’ll get to that in a bit. You know how me and Mikhail run a fight club for the Aura Wranglers and Astral Warriors? Gets their aggression out and stuff?” When she nodded, he sighed. “Okay, last night was testy. We had two girls, Amaya and Rosalie, cussing each other out when we were setting up the ring. So, we let ‘em go at it, and they’re PSI blasting and screaming, yadda yadda yadda.” He rolled his wrist. “Turns out they’re fighting over some boy named Jamison sayin’ the other stole him and whatever. Just dumb preteen nonsense.”

“Sounds like Whispering Rock hasn’t changed,” Chloe said, lip curling upwards. She remembered a few similar girls who had come to camp after Bobby graduated. They had been Nils’ girlfriends one summer and earned the ire of Elka Doom, the one person Chloe knew to never enrage at Whispering Rock. The feuds they shared were legendary, and she shuddered to remember them even as an adult.

He cackled. “Sure hasn’t! We finally broke ‘em up after twenty minutes ‘cause Amaya set the entire ring on fire. All the kids scattered like rats, and we had to stop the flames before they could set ablaze the entire forest.” At Chloe’s mouth falling open, he snickered again. “And that’s the tame part. Here’s where it gets worse.” Rolling his shoulders back, he heaved out a sigh. “We got the flames out, and we got the scorched ring back to the new shed near the parking lot. Mikhail’s pissed ‘cause he got that ring special for the kids, but when we actually came out to the parking lot-” He broke into a wide, toothy grin, one corner of his mouth stretching deeper into his cheek. “-his car was gone.”

“What?” Chloe breathed out, disbelief quieting her exclamation. She shook her head slightly while Bobby bobbed his head. She raked her fingers through her short hair. “But how could his car be gone?”

“Oh, I tell ya, he lost it." Bobby cupped his cheek, fondness in his voice. “He flung himself over to his parking space and starts running around it like the car is gonna pop up or stop bein’ invisible.” He pointed to the side. “And that’s when I noticed the front gates were wide open.”

Shock twisted her mouth into a frown and wrinkled her brow. She sensed he had derived some pleasure at Mikhail’s pain, but she kept that to herself. He seemed oddly calm as he recalled the story, his amusement smothering any frustration he must have felt, so she let him continue.

“Then, Phoebe and Quentin came running down and told us that two kids took Mikhail’s car for a joyride after they checked a couple security cameras when they saw the gates. One of ‘em picked the lock, and they drove off with no one knowing,” Bobby said, snapping his fingers, an example of his own prowess when the sound of his bedroom door locking reached her, “but that just ain’t it. Turns out four other kids just hoofed it outta camp when they saw the gate open before the two who stole his car, so now, we were down six campers just as night came.”

“This is something else,” Chloe said, sinking into her sleeping bag. She pulled the zipper up to her chin.

Bobby paused. He pressed his fingers to his mouth, Chloe noticing his fingernails seemed even for once. “You look like a pill bug,” he stated, his gums pronounced from his crooked grin.

“Then I’m a very comfortable pill bug because this sleeping bag is extremely warm,” she replied, Bobby laughing under his breath, the corners of his eyes crinkling. She smiled back at him, her skin heating up as he threaded his fingers through his thick hair.

“Anyway, uh-” He glanced at the ceiling for a split second. “-oh, yeah! So, Phoebe - she’s also freaking out, ya know, because six kids took off - tasked me and Mikhail to go find the two who stole his car, and Mikhail didn’t say anything. He just stomped over to my truck and waited for me to unlock it. We got in, and just as I was about to drive off, I realized that, uh, 'what about the other kids?'” Bobby rubbed his jaw. “I asked Phoebe, and she said she and Quentin would sneak out after telling some bullshit lie to the interns to make ‘em not tattle to HQ about us being incompetent or whatever.”

Chloe levitated her phone closer to her face. It seemed the story was only going to go downhill judging by the way he glanced at the floor. Even from only a screen, she noticed the clear apprehension written on his face despite his smirk. “Okay, so you two are in the car. What happens next?”

He groaned, his jubilation swapping for annoyance. He itched his neck and said, “Well, this is one shitty part. We were stuck driving around looking for his Volga. Mikhail had a GPS tracker in it connected to his phone, and you’d think it should have made it easier, but the signal was all fucked up.” Bobby shot his arms in different directions. “We were going on highways and side streets and through all these neighborhoods for hours! We even went down the same one-way three times, and uh-” He sucked down a sharp breath, one Chloe knew meant he was about to say something he regretted. “-we got pretty pissed at each other.” Heat darkened his cheeks to violet, and Chloe heard him tap his foot against the metal box spring. “I was getting mad at his stupid GPS not working, and he was yelling at me for fucking up directions. I mean, we were in the car together for like two hours at that point, so it was just escalating.” He shrugged and avoided her gaze, voice lowering. “Man, I shouldn't have gotten too pissed at the guy when it was his car that got jacked, not mine.”

Chloe hummed along. It was pleasant hearing him admit to his mistakes. She could understand his frustration at faulty electronics and the general problem. Anyone would have been outraged over a stolen car and missing children. While she knew his temper could still flare despite counseling, she was encouraged hearing him acknowledge that instigating a fight was not the way to handle such a precarious situation, his ruefulness coming in clearer as he sighed again.

“I'm glad you know it was wrong, but I understand where you're coming from. It must have been exhausting,” she said, Bobby giving her a grateful smile in return.

“Yeah, we were both pretty beat, but then, uh, heh-” He took in a breath through his teeth. “-we circled back around camp after his phone died, my truck was running low on gas another hour later, and lo and fuckin' behold, we found his car.”

She brightened and straightened, delighted that the story had taken a turn for the better. But she noticed the way he kept rubbing his fingers together. She cocked her head, asking where they discovered it.

“Well, the car was in a ditch off the side of a dirt road where loggers go down!” he hollered, throwing his arms out. He took the phone before it could collapse to the floor, his telekinetic hold on it evidently broken with his shout. He held it in his hand instead of using his powers, letting Chloe examine his face at the closer range, and she realized there were faintly black circles underneath his eyes. “So, I parked my truck, and Mikhail's already darted out before I could even come to a full stop. He was holding his hat to his chest like some kind of offended mom holding her Bible. He was all, 'What happened here? Where are the kids? The front is crumpled! All crumpled!'” He closed his eyes as if in pain. “And yeesh, all I could do was just kind of stand there and pat his shoulder 'til he punched my hand off.”

Chloe grimaced. She knew Mikhail's car was sturdy, a massive Volga that could have run down particularly small children. For the front of it to be decimated in such a brutal way, she feared for the safety and well-being of the campers, but she sensed the story had a happier ending when the same lackadaisical grin she had come to adore graced Bobby's face.

“We found the GPS busted next to the car, and we looked around the trees and these mounds of dirt where I guess loggers were hauling shit or whatever, I dunno, and bam!” He went to punch his other hand, but realizing he was holding his phone, he redirected his fist to the ceiling. “We found the kids making out on a bunch of broken trees!”

She exhaled her worry with a quiet sigh. “And they weren't injured?” she asked, and Bobby nodded.

“Not a damn scratch. As soon as they saw us, the girl started crying, and the boy took off running. Mikhail chased after him, so I was saddled with her. Her name's Kelly, and she's a first year Psychic Scout. She said that her boyfriend told her that Mikhail had given them permission to use his car,” he explained, Chloe's eyes widening once again. Bobby laughed and slapped his forehead. “Man, that's the same face I made when she told me! I couldn't believe it, but goddamn it, the kid was so earnest and kept crying that I was starting to feel bad for her. Her boyfriend had her all wrapped around his finger-” He twirled his finger next to his temple. “-just so he could impress her with a joyride until he drove it off the road. Then, she said that he used electromagnetic psychic waves to fuck with the tracker to keep us off their tail. That way, they could have their 'date night' as she called it, and she thought it was all okay because he said it was.”

She frowned and telekinetically unwrapped the velcro wrapping around her right arm. Taking her phone, she held it closer and said, “Bobby, that's serious. You explained to her that he was wrong, right?”

“I tried to, but she kept saying that he was just looking out for her by taking all those 'extreme measures,'” he replied, using air quotes. He clicked his tongue. “And here's where it gets ugly. Mikhail dragged the boy back, and we took one long look at him, and we realized who he was.” Bobby slowly shook his head, expression twitching in anger as he shook his fist. “Jamison.”

“Jamison?” She gasped. “The boy the other girls were fighting over?”

“Turns out that little bastard was three-timing them!” Bobby flipped up three fingers. “He was going out with three girls all at once, and when I shouted that at him, Kelly started sobbing that he used her, and she fired off a PSI blast that singed my fucking forehead. It would've seared my face completely if I didn't move back in time.” Bobby poked the bandage again and winced.

Chloe mimed his gesture and nodded. She had felt an odd pang there when she had woken up in the morning. It had gone away fairly quickly, so she deemed it inconsequential. Now, she wished she had gotten in contact with Bobby sooner instead of waiting for their nightly call, but he told her not to worry when distress came across her features.

“It's just a bruise at this point. I've gotten wounds worse than a crying kid shooting at me, and you know it,” he insisted, his smirk not entirely forced.

Relieved, she grinned back at him and said, “Well, that is good. What happened now that you found the culprit and the car?”

“Well, the car was totaled, and Mikhail was fucking pissed like a bull seeing red. He made Jamison telekinetically carry his car back to camp and said, “You are Astral Warrior. This should be easy for you, car thief. No resting, no putting down, you work hard now,' and he turned to me and told me to drive back with Kelly.” Bobby closed his eyes and laughed, his joviality like the beat of her favorite hip hop track. “I decided to cut my losses and drive back with the girl. They did come back eventually, but uh, it was pretty rough.”

She whistled low, the sounds of her commander telling her other crew members to shut it down for the evening. She noticed Bobby turned his head to the noise as well, asking if she was supposed to go to bed, but she shook her head. “Not just yet, but man, that is something else. I'm glad you aren't too injured, Bobby. In the end, it seems everything worked-wait a second.” She furrowed her brows, one keen detail suddenly eluding her, and she tightened her grip around her phone. “You said six kids went missing. What about the other children?”

“Which brings us back to why the gates were open,” Bobby retorted, raising his eyebrows. He levitated his phone and rubbed his palms together. “Y'see, when I got back with Kelly, Phoebe and Quentin were, uh, having words to put it nicely with the other counselors.” He tugged his earlobe and chuckled to himself. “Turns out Franke and Crystal ditched us and went to the movies, and when they bailed, they didn't shut the gate.”

Chloe closed her eyes and dragged her hand down her cheek, earning peals of laughter from Bobby. She knew Franke and Crystal were airheaded, but that was beyond ridiculous and irresponsible. “Oh, my God,” she groaned, “and so, because they decided to leave without telling anyone, all of that happened.”

“You bet,” Bobby finished with a firm nod. “When I got back, Phoebe was done with her rant, and Crystal looked like she was gonna get on her knees and pray for forgiveness or somethin', but they found the other four kids at the same theater and gave them a ride back.”

Chloe clapped her hand on her wrist. “I'm glad it all worked out in the end.”

Bobby pursed his lips, a sheen of sweat on his brow.

“But it seems there is more to this ending,” Chloe droned, her smile a bit strained.

“The interns ganged up on us and told HQ about the missing kids. We all got yelled at by three different higher-ups who teleported in during our argument with those assholes. Made matters way fucking worse when Mikhail and Jamison showed up in the middle of us getting screamed at in the parking lot by the second lady with Jamison looking ready to die of exhaustion.” He squeezed his eyes shut and massaged his temples, yelping when he nudged his bandage. “They wouldn't let us leave until we finished signing some shitty paperwork about...” He raised his head and hand only to lower them. “...blah blah blah. I don't even remember what the words were in that tiny-ass print. Something about extending my probation, I dunno. By the time we were done with helping the kids sign waivers about not suing the Psychonauts for negligence and child abandonment, it was sunrise, and I finally crashed.” He cleared his throat and locked eyes with her. “Chloe, after what happened last night, the lesson I learned is that time is an illusion.”

She chuckled against her better judgment, and he laughed with her. The story was sensational from beginning to end with twists and turns that she could not predict. Not even Vernon could have spoken such a tale. A part of her wished she had been with him experiencing the insanity as it happened instead of remaining in the cool lull of space, but it was nice hearing him recall the details. His voice soothed her, and watching his expression and gestures, so animated and full of life even when he looked ready to fall back asleep, calmed her as sleep restarted tugging on her eyelids.

“I'm glad you're okay,” she said, her voice quiet and gravelly.

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, clipping his hair behind his ear, “I'm good on this end. Just a night that lasted way too long.” He gasped. “Oh! How's space? What about those microorganisms ya found?”

Before she could answer, a loud rapping on the door silenced her. She frowned, knowing it was her commander, and she slouched in her sleeping bag. She cocked her head at the door, saying, “Sorry, but we'll have to continue this later.”

“That was the big shot boss, huh? Yeah, you look sleepy, too,” he said, getting up, the bed springs creaking again. He stretched, the muscles in his arms tensing, which she stared at, the faintly colored scars seemingly pinker in the dimly lit room. “I better get going. I slept in, so I better do...something to get me tired-” He sighed and dropped his arms to his sides. “-for my fucked sleep schedule to go back on track.”

“You should rest,” Chloe insisted, “and focus on yourself. You shouldn't overexert your body when you look as weary as you do, Bobby.”

Mirth flitted in his eyes. He rubbed his neck, curly locks getting caught in his fingers. “Aw, well, ya know what? Yeah, that sounds like a better idea. I am pretty fucking tired! Ha ha!”

Sharp knocking on her door silenced what she was about to say next. Bobby aimed his middle finger in the direction of the noise, and Chloe snorted, covering her mouth. She lowered her voice to a whisper, ready to sign off when she noticed him looking down at something. He tucked his fist to his mouth, and she felt a pleasant tingle on her lips. She touched her lower lip, her mouth a bit warmer than before as he lifted the vanilla mint chapstick from his mouth, which she had given him before boarding her spaceship.

It seemed that no matter how many times he had done it after their nightly chats, Chloe realized he would always blush a vibrant crimson hue to bring out the deep emerald of his eye and the scarlet in the other. She smiled at him and wished him a good night, softly adding, “I love you.”

“I-I love you, too,” he said, keeping his gaze steady with hers. “Um, sweet dreams and all that stuff, y'know? Zool.”

“Zool,” she murmured, tapping the end call button as his finger moved towards it on his side.

As the screen darkened, Chloe set her phone back on its cubby shelf. The screen lit up with the battery as it pressed into the charger. She leaned into her sleeping bag, the pull of zero gravity leaving her as she relaxed her muscles. Her eyelids slid shut, accepting the silence of space around her without a meteor zooming past their rocket or the whiny complaints of Intern Sanz a thin wall away.

She touched her lower lip again and grinned, her heart fluttering. Resisting the need to levitate, Chloe nestled into her sleeping bag and instead of the straps, she imagined Bobby next to her, his arms holding her close to him.


End file.
